Sam Kass, the Obamas’ Foodmaster General, Loves the Kitchen Garden

Kass takes inner-city students in Washington on tours of the White House garden

By Jennifer Steinhaueraug
New York Times
28, 2014

Excerpt:

Mr. Kass is expected to stay through the end of the president’s second term as one of the last remaining original staff members of this White House, perhaps for no other reason than his love of the garden, where 1,000 pounds of food are grown each year, much of it served on the premises.

“He has this bizarre affection for a fig tree,” said Eddie Gehman Kohan, whose blog, ObamaFoodorama.com, documents the eating life of the White House. She was describing a tree that grew from a sapling donated to the White House by Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s estate. Once, she said, the tree was accidentally yanked up and tossed with the weeds, but Mr. Kass rescued it.

“He was very emotional about it,” Ms. Gehman Kohan said. “He thought the tree was mad at him.”